Forums » Help » Looking for Developer to Create Clever HTML5 Easter Egg Game

I'm looking for a developer that can help me create a small clever HTML5 platform game experience on top of our lay-out as an easter egg.

My website generates millions of pageviews per day, so your creation would get a lot of exposure.

Look forward to hearing from you!

Rizz0, be prepared for an onslaught.

More details would probably help, like what sort of game you're looking for. 'platform game experience' doesn't really say much about what you're actually wanting.

@Arantor, thanks for asking.

I'm thinking about allowing my users to type the keystrokes for something like 'Mario' on the homepage, then have a character like Mario drop in the screen, kick away a few banners, and then let the visitor control the character, for example to collect coins, and use (parts of) my lay-out as the level for that.

Something like a Google doodle... but different. I think it could be a fun little project to work at, and I'd be happy to fund it, if has the potential to be good.

Hmmm, that could get... interesting.

I see two options. One, you'd do the entire thing in straight HTML5 using DOM manipulation (no Canvas, no Impact) and make use of normal screen trigonometry to examine the items there for positioning. Doable but complex and likely to be fragile. I'm also not sure how well it would work to have the element manipulation handle the 'kicking away' aspect.

Two, you'd recreate the entire layout in Canvas (on top of the existing layout), or at least create a transparent layer on top and have the game handle the geometry of 'invisible' barriers. It's also likely to be fragile, because it would rely on pixel-perfection alignment since nothing would be more frustrating than a user with a different browser window size having the Canvas (and thus all the 'platforms') in one place and the screen items somewhere slightly different. Plus it'd screw up navigational elements or anything else that would be under the Canvas unless you spend a lot more time getting the event pass-through handling correct.

The reason it works for Google is that they can devote a lot more time and manpower to it than most people probably realise, and their page is rather more simple than most and as such don't generally have to worry about navigation, things getting in the way and/or trying to make use of the rest of the page elements in the game.

These things are all doable of course (I remember seeing a fully functional copy of Lemmings running in the browser in pure JavaScript long before we had Canvas or HTML5) but it's the amount of time and energy required to do it. Personally, I think it's a vast amount of work for something that by definition (of an easter egg) many people won't even see.

Thanks the technical depth of your explanation. I only have basic knowledge of JS and DOM manipulation, so the precise technical complications would probably go beyond my knowledge, but I understand about the two options.

Some comments:
- my lay-out is rather simple and the gameplay doesn't have to be extensive if it's well executed. I think a canvas layer on top of the site could work. Maybe the normal screen would even work, but I can imagine that being a horror (probably especially for cross browser compatiblity).
- I don't mind about navigation not working while running the easter egg, we could just kill the entire game layer once a user dies, or when they press ESC.
- if it's a good easter egg, it won't go unnoticed. My website get 300.000+ unique visitors per day. If it's good, it will snowball, and even outside that audience. If it can be that good, then I think it's worth the money.

If you want to follow up on Skype or any other IM, let me know.

Not interested?

I'm interested but you probably can't afford me :)

@rizz0
You could afford me even less coz I'm not interested.

Actually, I would be interested were it not for the 12 other projects already under way.

@ Jerczu: that's a rather premature assumption. Would like to see your past work and get in touch.

@ Alexandre: thanks for that information. Good luck with your projects.

@rizz0 well there was a lot of offers like yours on this forum every time I gave my standard rate £25 p/h there was no reply. The games I made until now are here ultra.cdgn.co.uk, nervman.cdgn.co.uk and uboot.cdgn.co.uk currently I am working on an iPhone release and another browser game much bigger than the previous ones. My iPhone game should be available on AppStore by next month.

£25 p/h... FYI but that is not expensive at all. It's less than I'd ever charge for doing freelance at $60 USD per hour, and way less than we charge as an agency at $150 per hour.